1. Thick thighs and pretty eyes #3
He nods, face beet red. “I think so? There was a time when I was a kid...” he trails off, embarrassed.
“Holy shit. Well, I guess we’ll know soon enough,” I say dismissively.
“Sit down, you’re giving me neck pain.” He obediently flops into the chair.
I could get used to this, him being so compliant.
I open the chapter on the Burning Crone.
“So apparently, she haunts the kitchen, mostly. They think she’s the one who set the curtains on fire last winter. ”
Ewan nods. “She often appears to be burning. They think she was one of the witches they burned at the castle during the sixteenth century.”
“Damn. Depressing. But why is she haunting the hostel, if she was burned at the stake up there?” I say, nodding towards the small window and the view.
Ewan rubs the back of his head. “Do you... remember what the hostess said on the Ghost Bus Tour?”
“Not really.” I was too busy rolling my eyes at the absurdity of it all, and how I ended up as a ghost exterminator in the first place.
“Well, Earl Lynch used to do seances here, in this house. They said he called spirits from all over Edinburgh and bound them to the house for entertainment during his soirées.”
“I must admit, it paints a nice tale.” I lean back on the bed, my tank top riding up my midriff, revealing an expanse of skin.
Ewan’s eyes snatch on to it. Interesting.
“So I think we should do the full scene. Use our fancy equipment,” I gesture towards my bag.
“Just in case someone is watching us or there are cameras. We’re supposed to be professionals.
Then we can make up a story like... we apologised to her on behalf of all mankind for setting her on fire, and she moved on. Good enough?”
Ewan looks unsure, but he doesn’t contradict me.
“Alright, then. If we’re going ghost hunting all night, I need a power nap,” I say. “Wake me up at dinner time?”
He nods.
The last thing I see before closing my eyes is his giant body taking up all the space on the chair and his large hands fiddling nervously with the too-short sleeves of his ExorSquad overalls.
I’m awakened by a knock at the door. I blink away the remnant of sleep just as Ewan opens it quietly. Did he watch me sleep from his chair all along?
Shirley is standing outside the door, heavy bag in her arms. “I found the air mattress,” she says with a smile.
She looks different. Her purple hair is up in two pigtails now, and did she put make-up on? I have to concede, she’s like a dog with a bone. A dinosaur bone, I think, looking at my teammate.
“Thank you,” Ewan whispers, grabbing the bag effortlessly with just one hand. He looks at me apologetically when he notices I’m up.
“Do you need help inflating it?” she asks. “There’s a manual air pump with it.”
“It’s alright, I’ll manage,” Ewan says.
Shirley and I stare like two perverts as he unzips the front of his overalls and slides it off his shoulders and arms before tying it around his waist. Under it, he’s only wearing a white tank top, hiding nothing of his impressive physique.
Holy shit the sod is ripped. He empties the bag on the carpet and unrolls the air mattress swiftly.
In seconds, he has the pump connected and he’s stomping on it with efficient motion, flexing all his visible muscles.
I think I’m drooling.
“Oh my, you’re quite fit, Ewan,” Shirley has the gall to say. “Do you work out a lot?”
I’m not mad at her anymore. She’s asking all the right questions so I don’t have to.
Ewan looks up from the air mattress, face aflame. “I—I’m doing a Performance Sport degree in Edinburgh University. Rugby...”
My eyebrows raise at that. Suddenly, his thick thighs make sense. I can picture—
“Isn’t this your job? Ghost extermination?” Shirley asks.
He shakes his head. “I’m on a scholarship, but it’s not enough. I needed a job so...”
So, just like me, he was desperate. And now we’re both sharing a room in a hostel while waiting for midnight so we can pretend to hunt down the ghost of an old witch burned at the stake. What a life.
Ewan finishes inflating the mattress in record time without breaking a sweat. When I finally take my eyes off him, Shirley is watching me with a knowing look. I frown and stick my tongue out at her, like the professional I am. She chuckles.
We keep watching Ewan as he makes his bed, then we follow Shirley to the staff kitchen to eat dinner with them.
Midnight comes, and yet guests are still milling about the hostel, drinking beers, playing games, and retelling their adventures of the day.
We both sit on a couch in the massive living room by the kitchen, reviewing our plan of action, until the last people trickle back to the dormitories before curfew.
The living room is large and yet cosy. There are floor to ceiling windows, showing the dark outline of Edinburgh castle over the night sky, half a dozen couches, rows of tables in what looks like the breakfast area, a pool table, and a wide fireplace with a deer’s head above it wearing a top hat.
Again, I’m pleasantly surprised by the unhinged aesthetic of Lynch hostel.
Ewan has been reading the ExorSquad handbook attentively, but his frown has deepened during the past hour, and I can’t help but ask, “Found anything good?”
He hesitates, then reads, “If you’re having trouble visually tracking an entity, consider using glitter...”
I snort. “Are they for real?” I grab the handbook and take a look at a few entries.
“In some cases, evil ghosts have shown intense dislike to bad puns, resulting in them assuming corporeal form to try to silence the unfunny offender. Use this technique with parsimony, as it can annoy your teammates just as much...” I laugh.
“They say making the entity angry helps, in general.”
“Let’s try it, then,” I say, doing a quick google search for puns.
When we’re alone, at last, I get to my feet.
I open my bag and offer him the ghost extermination weapon labelled the PolterPulse V2.
1. I take the EMF meter and the S-TRK 88 Monitor, which is supposed to be giving us a temperature map of the room or something, if we’re to trust the handbook—which we don’t.
But it doesn’t matter, we just have to make it all believable.
Kick out a few imaginary ghosts, get paid, and leave.
“Let’s start in the kitchen,” I say.
Since that’s where the Burning Crone is supposed to do most of her haunting. The notebook talks about her reflection sometimes being seen in the windows late at night, or on the glass door of the microwave.
The kitchen is... a lot. The walls are painted bright orange and nothing matches, from the different chairs to the funny drawings and pictures on the baby-blue fridge. There is another crystal chandelier here, smaller than the one in the hall.
I turn the S-TRK 88 Monitor on and wait for it to load the temperature map. Ewan leans over my shoulder to look at the screen, and I can feel the warmth emanating from his body over my back.
The hottest thing around is probably not the Burning Crone, I think to myself.
The map is... inconclusive. There are pools of heat scattered over the kitchen, mostly around appliances such as the oven and the fridge.
“Incredibly helpful,” I mumble.
I don’t want to botch the job, just in case Lana has placed cameras all over the place.
“Can we try the EMF meter?” Ewan asks.
“Sure.” I pull it out and make a big show of studying the room. It beeps a few times with grating a sound. “What does it mean?” I whisper.
“I—I think it means there are electromagnetic fields?”
“And it means..?”
Ewan blushes. “Ghosts?”
I laugh. “Then the fridge is haunted.” I walk to it and open the double doors. “Hello, Burning Crone? Are you hiding behind the pickle jar or this suspicious bottle of milk?”
Staying in character is harder than I thought, and I can’t help but poking fun at our situation.
Ewan is standing at the centre of the kitchen, eyes wary. He’s holding the PolterPulse like an actual weapon. It looks like a kid’s toy in his hand. It probably is, to be honest.
“Do you know any bad puns?” I ask, wanting to tease him.
He looks at me with some degree of horror. “No...”
He’s really scared of ghosts. Poor thing... I want to make it worse.
“How do you call a nervous witch?” I ask. When he shrugs, I add, “ A twitch.” His eyes widen slightly. “What do you call witches who live together?” A pause. “Broom-mates.” He’s too busy staring at his reflection in the window to crack a smile. “What did the witch burned at the stake—”
But I never get to finish my pun as flames hotter than hell suddenly burn bright at the centre of the kitchen, and a nightmare crawls out of the fire.